Elon Musk turns 40 this year and is already the super hero entrepreneur of the smart green economy. Being an engineer he believes entrepreneurship means applying logic and critical thinking to a given problem in order to develop the best new solution. Elon likes to reinvent and reengineer problems on a big scale, especially transportation on the road and in space and production of clean energy. Next to being CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors, Elon is also CEO and CTO of SpaceX and Chairman of Solar City.

At ECO11, Klaus Dibbern, CEO of Flinc, pitched his dynamic ride sharing startup to investors and was interviewed by our Ecosummit TV moderator Ane Mari Aakernes. Flinc matches people that want to join the social mobility network to share rides to make money (driver) or save money (passenger). If you share rides in shared cars including taxis then we like to call it Sustainable Social Mobility. That’s the future of mobility. Flinc already has €1.2M funding and looks for a new funding round of approximately €1M. Klaus agreed to share his Flinc slides as PDF.

The 3rd German Electric Vehicle (EV) Congress takes place on 8-9 June 2011 in Bonn in the former Bundestag, indeed a spectacular conference venue. After attending the 2nd EV Congress last year, I was invited to join the programme advisory board by Michael Carus, CEO of the organiser Nova Institute. Nova Institute is a research and consulting firm that is ususally focused on renewable resources, bio feedstock and biodegradable materials. Together with IAV, the automotive engineers that have 4.000 employees, Nova once again put together an exciting programme looking into the future of mobility.

Konrad Erzberger pitches his German startup Tamyca to investors at Ecosummit 2011. Tamyca offers peer-to-peer car sharing in Germany. This means that the shared cars are owned by private people and not professional fleet operators. The trick is an insurance tariff that covers any damage happening when you rent your car to another driver to make some money. Tamyca is first mover in Germany but already has 2 competitors. The business model is executed in several other countries by competitors, too. We believe it’s a hot business model and worth investing in.

At ECO11, the consultant and automotive expert Gregor Matthies, Partner, Bain & Company, gave a well-prepared overview of the Electric Mobility market. It turns out that German car makers are not leading the development of new EVs which I personally regret. At the same time, this offers new business opportunities for startups that want to develop new electric future cars and sell them later to the OEMs.

Going Smart Green Now – our motto for ECO11 is a call to action as we need more people and money to build our Smart Green Economy. After 5 months of hard work the ECO11 Agenda is online. The current version is 0.9. We only have a few slots left for startup pitches, hot companies to watch and a final keynote that sends our participants home with ultimate motivation. We have assembled 68 ECO11 Speakers showcasing Europe’s leading Cleantech VCs, startups, corporates and visionary scientists. Following is my personal agenda preview. I am extremely grateful and look forward to a mind-blowing Smart Green Economy Congress which you definitely should not miss.

Based in Spain’s Basque country, Hiriko is the first company to build the electric City Car developed by MIT’s Medialab. Hiriko sounds Japanese but it is in fact a mix of Basque and Spanish: hiri = urban, ko = short for coche (car). Hiriko’s networked urban cars are designed to be used only as shared cars. Imagine a future where you can take any car when you leave your home or office. Imagine a future where all shared cars are electric. That’s where we have to be.